An anonymous reader writes “Phoronix constructed a low-cost, low-power 12-core ARM cluster running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and made out of six PandaBoard ES OMAP4460 dual-core ARMv7 Cortex A9 chips. Their results show the ARM hardware is able to outperform Intel Atom and AMD Fusion processors in performance-per-Watt, except it sharply loses out to the latest-generation Intel Ivy Bridge processors.” This cluster offers a commendable re-use of kitchenware. Also, this is a good opportunity to recommend your favorite de-bursting tools for articles spread over too many pages.

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12-Core ARM Cluster Beats Intel Atom, AMD Fusion

If Broad Area Maritime Surveillance, or war gadgets are your bag, then things just got real. Northrop Grumman has just unveiled the MQ-4C BAMS Triton, the latest addition to the US Navy’s Maritime Patrol and Reconnaissance Force. The spy plane was more than four years in development, has a wingspan of 130.9 feet, and is able to cover more than 2.7 million square miles in a single mission. As you will have been unable to avoid noticing, the unmanned aircraft definitely inherited some of the RQ-4 Global Hawk’s dome-like DNA, and will edge towards active service after completing functional requirement reviews and system development and demonstration flights. Want to bone-up on the full spec? Hit the more coverage link for the numbers. In the meantime, we’re wondering if they might extend the research.

Northrop Grumman Unveils US Navy’s MQ-4C BAMS Triton unmanned aircraft originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 16 Jun 2012 17:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Northrop Grumman Unveils US Navy’s MQ-4C BAMS Triton unmanned aircraft

Broad Sustainable Building (BSB) is an innovative Chinese architectural firm whose mission is to erect “medium-cost, super-saving utility buildings and to promote a futuristic urban lifestyle.” They are planning to build the world’s tallest building, the Sky City Tower in Changsha, Hunan, whose 220 storeys will be erected in 90 days. The timelapse video above shows another BSB project, a 30-storey hotel that went up in 15 days. The company claims its designs are extremely seismically robust and environmentally efficient. From CNNGo:

Its 220 stories will provide a total of 1 million square meters of usable space, linked by 104 elevators.

Zhang said Sky City is expected to consume a fifth of the energy required by a conventional building due to BSB’s unique construction methods, such as quadruple glazing and 15-centimeter-thick exterior walls for thermal insulation.

The company’s construction methods also seem to save money.

According to Chinese newspaper 21 Century Business Herald, the total investment in Sky City is RMB 4 billion (US$628 million), compared with US$1.5 billion on Burj Khalifa and US$2.2 billion on Shanghai Tower.

Sky City: China plans world’s tallest building

(via Kottke)

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Worlds tallest building will be built in China, over 90 days

chicksdaddy writes “A web site used to distribute software updates for a wide range medical equipment, including ventilators has been blocked by Google after it was found to be riddled with malware and serving up attacks. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is looking into the compromise. The site belongs to San Diego-based CareFusion Inc., a hospital equipment supplier. The infected Web sites, which use a number of different domains, distribute firmware updates for a range of ventilators and respiratory products. Scans by Google’s Safe Browsing program in May and June found the sites were rife with malware. For example, about six percent of the 347 Web pages hosted at Viasyshealthcare.com, a CareFusion Web site that is used to distribute software updates for the company’s AVEA brand ventilators, were found to be infected and pushing malicious software to visitors’ systems.”

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Support Site For Hospital Respirators Found Riddled With Malware

The Japanese Ministry of Defense has created the world’s first spherical flying machine. The drone can hover like a helicopter and take off and land vertically while maintaining an ability to propel itself forward with wings flying at speeds up to 40 mph. There are three gyro-sensors embedded into the drone to maintain altitude and autopilot even if it’s flight path is disrupted. And probably most frightening, it can hit the ground and roll in any direction, then immediately pop back up into mid-air.

The cost of parts for the machine is approximately US$1400, and the lead engineer Fumiyuki Sato explained that the parts were purchased off the shelf. The researchers developed the drone to record video in remote or dangerous locations…or perhaps to train young Jedis. Check the jump for more footage of the spherical drone!

(more…)

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Japanese Flying Sphere Can Record Video but Will it Help Train Jedis?

Amazon is prepping a 7-inch $199 tablet for a third quarter release, reports Max Wang for Digitimes. Reportedly, this tablet will have better specs than the Fire with a higher quality screen and more than likely a more competent computing platform. The original Fire will then get cut to $150. Then, later in the year or maybe in early 2013, Amazon will release a 10.1-inch model. This comes by way of an “upstream supply chain” source. Digitimes is as sketchy as trade publications get, but logic dictates that there is some truth here.

Amazon will release a new Fire model this year. That’s a given as Amazon will likely try to replicate last year’s stellar holiday season lead by the first Fire. A larger model is likely in the cards, too, although I wouldn’t say it’s a lock for this year.

Amazon has long found success by releasing new Kindle hardware at a lower price point. The original Kindle started out at $399. A Kindle is nothing more than a hardware portal to Amazon’s massive marketplace. Unlike competitors in the tablet space, Amazon can afford to sell hardware at a loss as long as the loss revenue is compensated by Amazon purchases. Amazon’s end game doesn’t involve besting Apple, Samsung or Motorola in the tablet game, but rather selling more wares.

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Amazon To Cut $50 Off The Fire, Release A 10.1-inch Model And New $199 7-inch, Says Report

Dropbox can be a nifty service to have in your digital arsenal, but a new change to the service may make sharing files a little less straightforward. According to an email sent to developers who use the Dropbox API, the cloud storage company will no longer be creating Public folders for new users starting on July 31.

Fret not, you current Dropbox users — a Dropbox representative left a note on the company’s support forums stating that the functionality won’t disappear for current users, but those who create new accounts after the cutoff date won’t be able to their dump files in a public folder to simplify sharing.

The Dropbox team has been busy though, and last month they added a new feature to the mix that in most cases mitigates the need for a Public folder in the first place. Back in April, the company launched the ability to quickly create links to any file stored in a Dropbox account, something that my colleagues were rather enamored with because of its simplicity.

As straightforward as the new feature is, it’s arguably less useful at times. Instead of being able to link directly to a file stored in a Public folder, a link created with the Get Link feature routes people to a download page where they can snag the file. It’s painless enough when you want to keep the file in question, but more than a few people on the Dropbox forums express concerns over sharing certain kinds of files, and photos in particular. After all, it’s far better to just view an image rather than go through the additional step of clicking through a splash page to download it.

But the question remains — why did Dropbox feel the need to do this in the first place? The official reason is a decidedly pragmatic one. According to their email, the new link-oriented sharing model is a more scalable way to handle the sorts of use-cases that people use the Public folder for, which is sure to help as the service continues to grow (they tiptoed over the 50 million registered user mark a few months back). There could still be more behind the change in policy, and I’ve reached out to Dropbox for some further insight.

The change is certainly a bummer (and I’m looking forward to seeing more of how the community reacts to it), but in the end it seems like a small price to pay to keep the service as cheap and responsive as it is.

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Dropbox Will Soon Be Done With Public Folders, But Existing Users Get To Keep Them

From Melbourne’s Astor Theatre, a harrowing tale of the way that the DRM on digital projectors — intended to stop exhibitors from leaking high-quality videos onto the Internet — can interfere with legitimate exhibition. Punishing the innocent to get at the guilty is never a good answer, morally or commercially. The most secure way to manage theatrical exhibition is to ban it altogether; the DRM scheme used by digital projectors comes pretty close to that “solution.”

Unlike 35mm film prints that are tangible, come on spools, and run through a mechanical projector, DCPs are files that are ingested into the digital projector which is in many ways simply a very high-tech computer system. Because the physical file is ingested into a projector it can – if the cinema has enough space on its server – be kept there indefinitely and so, having created this situation themselves, the studios and distributors lock the files so that they can only be screened at the times scheduled, booked and paid for by the cinema. This means each DCP comes with what is called a KDM (Key Delivery Message). The KDM unlocks the content of the file and allows the cinema to play the film. It is time sensitive and often is only valid from around 10 minutes prior to the screening time and expiring as close to 5 minutes after the scheduled time. Aside from the obvious fact that this means screenings really do need to run according to scheduled time, it is also means the projectionist can’t test to see if the KDM works or that the quality of the film is right before show time. This isn’t always a problem. But when it is…

When it is a problem we have what happened last night. The KDM we received for Take Shelter didn’t work. We discovered this about ten minutes prior to show time. Being a cinema, and holding evening screenings we couldn’t just call the distributor to get another one because they work office hours. So, our steps began with calling a 24 hour help line in the US. Once we went through the process of authenticating our cinema and scheduled screening we were told we had to call London to authorise another KDM for this particular screening. After calling London and re-authenticating our cinema and session, we were told we could be issued another KDM, but not before the distributor also authorised it. This meant another 5-10 minute delay as we waited for the distributor to confirm that we were indeed allow to show the film at this time. Once confirmation was received we waited for the new KDM to be issued. The KDM arrives as an email zip attachment that then needs to be unzipped, saved onto a memory stick and uploaded onto the server. This takes another 5-10 minutes. Once uploaded the projector needs to recognise the KDM and unlock the programmed presentation. Thankfully, this worked. However, until the very moment when it did we were as unsure as our audience as to whether or not the new KDM would work and therefore whether or not our screening would actually go ahead.

This is one example of one incident in one cinema. There are thousands upon thousands of screenings at cinemas just like us all over the world constantly experiencing these same issues.

What Happened Last Night

(Image: Ozone projectionist, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from gawler_history’s photostream)

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DRM in the projector booth – destroying the village to save it

A British man with ties to LulzSec was indicted on conspiracy and hacking charges for attacking websites operated by Fox, PBS, and Sony.

Twenty-year-old Ryan Cleary was indicted Tuesday in US District Court in Los Angeles, but he is already in custody in England because he faces similar charges there for running botnets and mounting DDoS attacks.

“Federal authorities allege that between April 2011 through June 2011, Cleary conspired with LulzSec members to intentionally cause damage to the computer systems of Fox Entertainment Group in Los Angeles and stole confidential information including data relating to people auditioning for ‘The X-Factor,'” the Los Angeles Times reported. “The indictment also alleges Cleary hacked into and defaced the PBS NewsHour website and created a separate website where he and others published confidential information stolen from entertainment company systems.”

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Suspected LulzSec member indicted in US for hacking Fox, PBS, and Sony

Paper cups were the first widely-available product that was meant to be used once and then discarded, and it was a life saver of the time. Before the Dixie Cup, water was dispensed to everyone using a common cup or dipper, which transmitted diseases that had no cure back in the day. But inventor Lawrence Luellen just wanted a way to sell water for the American Water Supply Company. Read about the origin of the Dixie Cup, how and why it was named, and how it took off and influenced products that came after it, at Smithsonian’s Food and Think blog. Link

(Image credit: Lawrence Luellen)

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The Unnatural History of the Dixie Cup